Experimental piece evaluation:

On the 18th of February theatre strand had there performance of 'The cabinet of  curiosity's'.
The show took place in the musical theatre rooms and was set up like an exhibition where the audience could walk around as if at an art gallery. we had to perform 3 shows and as the night went by each performance became more and more challenging.

My independent piece was inspired by 5 works of art from the TATE gallery and i used each piece of art to develop my own piece. Before the show started we were asked to get into our starting positions and i was apprehensive to how the audience would respond to my piece. As the show began and people entered the space i was in neutral and the spectators had to read my artist rational to understand my piece but once on person painted me the rest followed it was very emotionally draining because each time paint was put on my i had to react with an emotion and stare into the eyes of the audience while expressing the emotion. For me the first audience was the best because they were fully participating with me and were completely engaged. But my performance changed for the other performances as the audience where not as aware of what i wanted them to do, so i had to improvise in order for my piece to still be successful so I took on the role of the audience and decided to paint my self and in body the emotion.

the challenges of my piece where that i did not know what to expect every audience members reaction was different so i had to improvise and stay on the ball with each person and create an individual experience for each spectator which was very challenging and meant i constantly had to be aware of who i was interacting with. my weaknesses where that i sometimes had to gesture the the paint or the sign behind me that said 'PAINT ME' which i feel took away from my performance and removed some emotion but it was improvised. But the strengths of my performance where that when the audience where engaged the performance was powerful and thought provoking as i stared the audience in the eyes and could feed of there reactions. The logistics of the performance were also very challenging e.g. cleaning up setting my space and getting ready to perform all posed a challenge but i over came this and the performances where successful.

Our group performance was also success i feel because of the commitment and dedication of each person in the group piece we all worked together to create a great piece of theatre that we could all be proud of. the strengths of our performance was just the pure dedication of each cast member which radiate and was obvious for the audience members but the weaknesses and challenges to over come where that the audience did not move as aspects for the sperm section to we had to make a collective instinctual choice and space that piece differently but it still worked out.

Over all the whole show i feel was a success because of the commitment of everyone in the stand and we created a great piece of theatre.

 

In our lesson today we worked on our experimental pieces of 20 minuets to then be able to perform them on loop to the class after we had done this the class gave feed back on what we had done my feed back was positive and constructive the class really responded well to the concept and idea of my piece but they were my concerned about the execution and where my piece could go, e.g. Logistics would the audience know there role so I had to think of a way of making it apparent that audiences role is to throw paint at me the paint to symbolise emotion, but i realised that this was not practical so made the decision to do this my self and cover up the pots so i did not know what colour i was putting on my self i thought this would be more practical.

What does it say to an audience so far? 
Our group piece says many things to the audience it speaks about nature Vs nurture and about the person them selfs, the start of the piece is focused on the scientists and the questions they are asking this part of the piece addresses real questions and discussions being had by scientists but it also de-humanises the individual and asks questions as a whole which then contradicts the next sequence which is the fertilisation part, where you see each sperm as a human and that they all have the potential for life but some slowly die and only one makes it to the egg this shows how delicate the human life is and is there to show the nature side to the argument. through out the piece the audience and constantly reminded of the topic of NvN and that is apparent throughout the sequences, so it says to the audience that there are many factors that play into why someone is they way they are.

What is your favourite moment of the piece so far and why?

My favourite section in the piece is the part when we are some of us are under the sheets and it is suppose to represent the womb i think its a really beautiful section and done very elegantly with the lights and it just a very creative and visually exciting way of showing the audience something.

How is it experimental? 

it is experimental way of creating theatre because it does not  follow convention and uses physical theatre and surrealism to tell a story. An example is when some of us become sperm with tights over our heads this is surreal and experimental. 

In the lesson we began exploring our group piece and what we were going to do with it, Sarah explained to us her idea ad vision which we then started to create.
The bases of the piece was Nature Vs Nurture this a topic or discussion that i love to talk about and explore i have always been interested in it and the idea of if the person who you are is the way you were born or the society you were brought up in. This video is something i mentioned in class and is one that is about her up binging and abuse at an early age.

Nature and Nurture Debate

The Argument Continues

Your physical features can be identified as identical to that of your parents, like your eyes from your father, and the hair color from your mother. However, your personality and talents may have come not from your father or mother. The environment where you grew up may have a lasting effect or influence on that way you talk, behave and respond to the things around you.

One of the oldest arguments in the history of psychology is the Nature vs Nurture debate. Each of these sides have good points that it's really hard to decide whether a person's development is predisposed in his DNA, or a majority of it is influenced by this life experiences and his environment. As of now, we know that both nature and nurture play important roles in human development, but we have not known yet whether we are developed majorly because of nature or due to nurture.

Nature

The coding of genes in each cell in us humans determine the different traits that we have, more dominantly on the physical attributes like eye color, hair color, ear size, height, and other traits. However, it is still not known whether the more abstract attributes like personality, intelligence, sexual orientation, likes and dislikes are gene-coded in our DNA, too.

One of the hottest issues against nature theory is that there may be an existing "gay gene", which explains that gays are actually born that way. Another issue is that the criminal acts, tendency to divorce and aggressive behavior causing abuse can be justified by the "behavioral genes" once the researchers have proven their existence.

On the other hand, the behavioral genes are somewhat proven to exist when we take a look at fraternal twins. When fraternal twins are reared apart, they show the same similarities in behavior and response as if they have been reared together.

Nurture

The nurture theory holds that genetic influence over abstract traits may exist; however, the environmental factors are the real origins of our behavior. This includes the use of conditioning in order to induce a new behavior to a child, or alter an unlikely behavior being shown by the child. According to John Watson, one of the strongest psychologists who propose environmental learning as a dominating side in the nature vs nurture debate, once said that he can be able to train a baby randomly chosen in a group of 12 infants, to become any type of specialist Watson wants. He stated that he could train him to be such regardless of the child's potentialities, talents and race.

Although it is true that fraternal twins raised apart have remarkable similarities in most respects, still the intervention of the environment have caused several differences in the way they behave.

In the end, we are still left with the confusing question: Are we born this way

taken from - https://explorable.com/nature-vs-nurture-debate

As a year we went to the TATE MODERN to gain inspiration for our experimental piece in which i now know what i am doing i have selected pieces which have inspired and supported my idea-

This sequence of paintings of buckets gave me the inspiration for an aspect of water that i am interoperating into my experimental piece the paint that will come off my body will drip into the water and at the end of my piece it will become symbolic of a humans brain and all the colours (emotions) mixed together to be a representation of the amount of uncontrollable emotions in the human brain.

This piece was also inspiration for the mind idea because it felt chaotic and the same emotion mixed together out of control in a big mess of feeling how 1 emotion can do a million things to a person sometimes impossible to untangle.

This is one of the pieces that stoke out the most for me inspiration wise the idea of paint emotion colour my audience members will not know the colour that they are throwing at me just like the blind people in the video did not know the colour that they were using the painting came from emotion and imagination so i wanted to play with  this i am not sure yet if it will be the audience putting the paint on me or my self but either way the colour of the paint will not be known until its on my body then i will adopt the emotion of the colour so red could be anger or passion ect.

I also was very interested in this piece not only is it a beautiful drawing it also spoke to me about the different sides of a person what ones are shown to the world and which ones are not this reflects my work with the emotion part and how we as humans have so many different emotions like the mind is infinite.

This piece to me is similar to the blue wool piece amount all the emotions mixed together being unable to separate them or remove one the way the water will be at the end of my piece and the one directly below the TV is what I invitation the water to look like once my performance has been completed.

In our second lesson we focused on 'impossible tasks' a task that we could never achieve e.g. flying to the moon or digging a whole in the ground all the way to Australia. i was given 'jump out the window and touch the moon' so we had to try our hardest to achieve this even though it was not achievable and use every in of our strength to try and make this possible at the end of the task i was completely  tired but it taught me about using your intier body to get something done metal and physical strength thats what you need in acting.

The Actors limit is something passes down by word of mouth and interpretations of Antonin Artuad acting methods.

In the lesson we explored this 'theatre of cruelty' and worked on it. we did strenuous physical activities which then tapped into our emotions at the end of the lesson i was completely exhausted and felt both mentally and physically challenged. you could work your hardest but still there was something else beyond that that you could attempt to reach.

There was such a contradiction and juxtaposing of the different tasks we had to complete in the lesson, one was that we had to walk around the space pretending we were on a grid trying to get to something as the end we had a goal, and i struggled most with this because i found it almost impossible to imagine something at the end of the end of the grid there was a goal i knew i would never achieve. But for half an hour of the lesson Sarah played drum and bass music and said 'move when your body feels like moving' and this for me was incredible no goal no task just feeling the music and moving your body this is something that i enjoyed so much and felt connected to the room was black and our eyes where closed we were free to feel what we wanted and that worked best for me and made me connected to my body and mind. Before in theatre i felt that i had not totally physically challenged my self and i made the observation that when i was physically challenged i was more able to tap into my human emotions. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8MWKsheHxk

listen to this close your eyes and see how your body responds...

In the first lesson we where also given Artaud's A spurt of blood to work on in groups,
the out come was very interesting as everyone came up with there own unique interpretation of the play staged it and spoke it in very different ways. i loved the play because of how surrealist it was and i really saw it as a piece of intelligent art and it spoke to me in weird ways i have always been a fan of surrealist art so this really interested me and i liked how some of it i did not understand which made me almost enjoy it more- 

Antonin Artaud is one of the most controversial and discussed figures in the history of twentieth century theatre. While he is widely recognised as a poet and an influential theatre theorist, he is also remembered as a playwright, actor, artist, designer and director. He was born in Marseille, France on September 4, 1886 and his childhood was marked by a series of illnesses and accidents. His health did not improve as he matured and for most of his life he was beset with ill health, pain and nervous depression. He was continually admitted and discharged from hospitals and sanatoria and developed addictions to hallucinatory and pain-reducing drugs like opium. His addiction and abuse of these substances began to have permanent effects and his mental health gradually deteriorated. However, he always managed to write and his fluctuating state of mind is represented throughout his many pieces of writing and painting. He was forcibly committed to various mental asylums for about a decade and although he was eventually released from the asylum of Rodez in France, he died less than two years later.